


Mistletoe

by PlatonicRabbit



Series: 100 Follower Tumblr Competition Fills [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, original character death, questionable interpretation of Norse mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:30:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlatonicRabbit/pseuds/PlatonicRabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel needs a vessel after running from Heaven, but the family he destroys has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> For QuirkyKayleeTam, for the Tumblr thingymabobby (this is so, so late, I'm so sorry, It just kept going in weird directions every time I worked on it)  
> The prompt I used was:  
> "The tale of Gabe leaving heaven (bonus points if his first attempts of fixing family problems of Earth are what lead him to be Loki)"
> 
> Apparently I just give things random, vaguely appropriate names in flower language when I'm stumped for titles.

**If you're not reading this on AO3 it has been stolen.**

Gabriel didn’t stick around long after God made His decree. He fulfilled his final duty, passing along the minutes of what happened in their “council meeting” to the younger angels who had been excluded from proceedings, and used the ensuing confusion to slip out. Lucifer’s loyalists immediately started to riot, trying to make their way to their leader before Michael finished escorting him down to the newly constructed cage. Fools. They’d be caught and thrown into Hell right alongside Lucifer. Naomi’s subordinates, the ‘enforcers’ of Heaven, were already on to them, and battles were breaking out all over the celestial plane.

No one noticed God's Messenger leaving.

Gabriel’s true form lit up the Eastern hemisphere like daylight, probably scaring the little humans below out of their wits. The angel dived, heedless of the human’s notice, gaze fixed on the black ocean surface.

He crash landed in the ocean, diving deep, as deep as he could go. When his wings were scraping the floor of the trench, he finally let out the scream of despair that had been clawing at his insides the whole way down. A sea serpent blinked at him in the dark, deciding whether or not Gabriel would make a good meal. After a moment it seemed to decide anything that odd, and large, was probably not great for eating, and swam away. 

The cold water swirling around Gabriel calmed him, slightly, but not enough. He remained, drifting, for what seemed like years.

 

By the time Gabriel surfaced he was sure the ruckus in heaven would have died down. His absence had been noted. Gabriel could hear his siblings calling for him, confused and afraid, but shut them out, slamming the metaphorical door.

God was silent, and had been since Gabriel left. Gabriel wondered if that meant his Father had accepted his leaving or if he had angered Him.

There were humans near Gabriel. He wondered where in the world he was, since he’d allowed himself to drift with the deep sea currents. He could be half a world away from where he had first touched down, for all he knew.

The air was cold here, and the water colder. Gabriel glanced at the stars to get a read on his location, and saw the lights he had once watched with his brothers for hours at a time. He snapped his eyes away, flinching. North, then.

The sight of the Aurora Borealis, while painful, reminded Gabriel that his vessel bloodline currently lived somewhere in this part of the world, and he wondered if God had nudged him along this path after all. It seemed strange he’d drifted so far, and to this particular place, by chance. In fact, it seemed almost impossible given the continent sitting right in the way.

Invisibly, Gabriel swept over the land, searching. It didn’t take long. Vessels shone like beacons, especially to the angel they were intended for. And human families tended to stick close together.

In the end he found them living win a hamlet less than fifty miles from the one they’d lived in three centuries ago, the last time he'd had need of them. He hovered, for a while, watching them. Mother, father, two living children. The mother wasn’t an option, obviously, and the two sons, the twins Vali and Nari, were barely mature enough to hold Gabriel, and would burn out quickly despite their blood. Within a year he’d be searching for a replacement. So it would have to be the father. Loki. A closer look at the man confirmed to Gabriel he was making the right choice. The man was dying, slowly. Disease was eating away at his insides. Soon he would be sick enough to be unable to work, a drain on resources, to drag his family through the mud while they tried to help him with pathetic herbal mixtures and prayers that would be ignored.

Better for them all to lose Loki now. Sigyn could remarry, Vali and Nari wouldn’t have to watch their father suffer.

This, then, was the solution. The way to hide himself enough that he wouldn’t stand out when his brothers inevitably came looking.

Gabriel ignored the voice telling him this was wrong, manipulating and stealing the lives of these humans for his own selfish ends was wrong. This was a sign. Like ending up here in the first place had been. The man was in Gabriel’s vessel bloodline, and he would die without interference. His life was forfeit.

It didn’t take long to convince Loki to say yes. All Gabriel had to do was imply that he would take one of the man’s children instead, if he were refused. Loki might have been a disloyal husband, but he loved his children.

Gabriel removed Loki’s soul, careful not to damage it, and let it go, watching as it floated up towards Heaven. A part of him yearned to follow. He shut it down. A sound from the house alerted Gabriel to the presence of the other humans nearby. Sure enough, Loki's twins were watching him, hands entwined, shivering in the chilly night air.

‘Go back to sleep, sons,’ Gabriel said, trying his best to sound like their real father rather than an impostor.

It sounded fake, and weak, even to him, and neither twin was fooled.

‘Where’s dad?’ asked the bolder one. Vali. Both their faces were set in grim determination.

Gabriel decided not to insult the boys by lying to them. They’d seen their father let him in. They’d seen the soul being released. They were smart enough to know the difference between warm, jolly Loki and the cold and emotionless stranger who’d replaced him.

‘Your father has given a great sacrifice. He did it for you, to keep you safe.’

Nari was hiding an iron knife behind his back. The region had some recent experience with malicious fey folk, enough that local folks still taught their children counter measures. But Gabriel wasn’t a fairy. He summoned the small knife to his hand, and handed it back, hilt first, to the boys.

‘You wouldn’t get anywhere with that. Trust me, boy. I’m out of your league.’

Nari’s face slackened in shock, but his brother drew back a fist as if to punch Gabriel. The twins resembled their father, resembled Gabriel’s vessel. Vali and Nari had Loki’s eyes, as well as his build and shoulders. By the standards of the day, they were healthy, strong, tall boys.

‘Don’t come looking for me. You deserve lives of your own.’

With no more than that, Gabriel was gone.

 

_Ten years later_

Vali is the one who finally decides they are leaving. He arrives home one day and throws their meager few possessions in a hide bag Sigyn had made before she died. A handful of coins, a loaf of bread, hunting knives and their spare set of clothes. It isn’t much. When Nari returns, a string of rabbits hanging from his belt, Vali is ready to go.

It takes over two day’s walk to reach the next town. The innkeeper there remembers the creature, whom he’d seen barely a month previously. The thing that took Loki’s body had taken to using the man’s name. “Loki” was a sweet talker, and had seduced the innkeeper’s daughter under his own roof after talking his way into free lodging for the night. All it takes is a promise to kill Loki when they find him and the man offers Vali and Nari cheap (but not free, he was wary of being too kind to strangers nowadays) lodging and warm meals. They leave the next morning with an idea of the right direction. Vali is angrier than ever, after hearing of the creature’s misdeeds.

 

It’s almost a month of hard travel before “Loki” finds them. Nari wonders if he had known the whole time, if he had been watching them from the day he stole their father. The inn is in the middle of nowhere, and the kind old lady is eager to take their packs, but as soon as the twins are relaxed and fed, her face morphs into one more familiar. 

‘I can’t say I’m surprised. You had that look, when I last saw you. Like you'd be coming to find me, one day.’

Vali is almost frothing at the mouth, but Nari sits still, quiet hatred seething on his face. When Vali starts spewing threats, the thing cuts him off with its magic, a finger slashed horizontally through the air.

‘Now, I could let you go, again; it didn’t work out so well the last time, but, hey, you’re still just kids. You deserve a second chance. You’d have to swear on your father’s soul, and your own, not to look for me again…Or,’ the creature pauses, alien eyes staring at Loki’s sons from his own face.

‘I could bring you with me. Explain to you why I had to do what I did and hope you forgive me. I don’t like that option either, because I’m feeling just a little bit awkward around you pair, but it could have some benefits. So, boys, what’s it going to be?’

The creature knows, of course, that they’re only going with it for a chance to stab it in the back when it lets its guard down. And the boys know that it knows. The body-snatcher could just as easily wipe Vali and Nari’s memories of it and stick them back in their home town, or if it wasn’t feeling generous, simply kill them. It doesn’t. Nari wonders if that means the creature is genuinely remorseful for what it did. It certainly seems to want Nari and his brother to understand.

They walk to wherever it is “Loki” wants to take them. Nari wonders why. It could teleport them across the known world in an instant and yet it spends its time walking seemingly aimlessly through the wilderness. It seems to want to bond with them. It’s always talking, asking questions, volunteering random tidbits about its own life, even trying to entice the twins to join in on singing bawdry road songs. Nari wishes it would stop. He doesn’t want to know about how this creature had its own family, its own father and brothers. He doesn’t want to know that something horrible had happened, that it had had to kill Loki, ruin their family, to save itself. He doesn't want to understand it. The creature always cuts itself off before getting into specifics, but Nari picks up enough from what it does let slip to start feeling sorry for the creature, and hates himself for it. The thing killed his father, doomed his mother to the melancholy that claimed her life, and here he is, eating its food and listening to its life story. He was shaming his family. He was definitely shaming Vali, who grew frostier toward both the creature and Nari by the day.

Eventually, of course, it happened. The creature turned his back to them, as he had a dozen times already, and Vali pulled his knife. He stabbed it, over and over, in the back, chest, stomach, throat, once through the eye, sobbing all the while. The creature stood there, took it without flinching, until the blows grew weak and Nari took the blade from his brother’s hand. Vali sobbed on the cold ground at the creature’s feet, and the creature looked on his charges with something like pity.

When his whimpers died, Vali stood and offered Loki the knife, the same one he’d taken from them a decade earlier. Loki’s hand closed over Vali’s and pushed the weapon away. 

‘Are you ready to listen, Vali?’ he asked.

The knife was put away and the fire was lit for the night with a snap of Loki's fingers, despite the fact that no one had gathered wood. Loki had somehow made the single brace of rabbits last the long weeks they’d travelled, but the last one was now roasting as he spoke.

‘My name,’ Loki said, stating at the crackling meat, voice hardly audible over the fire, ‘was Gabriel.’

 

Loki wishes the boys had moved on, like he had asked them to. He wishes he didn’t have this hanging over his head, the reminder of the first four lives he had ruined in this world. But it’s too late. He can’t put off his return home any longer, without missing the new arrival.

At least the violent impulses towards him have died down in the days since Vali’s assault. Both twins, though Vali with a look of disgust, have agreed to call him Loki and set aside their personal feelings. The news that their father had been dying anyway had helped, though Loki suspects the truce will only last until one of them remembers he can heal.

To his surprise, it’s Nari, not Vali, who points it out over the perfectly cooked venison Loki had willed into existence.

‘So, you can fix wounds, right? Vali stabbed you half a hundred times and there’s not a scratch on you.’

Loki sets his dinner carefully to one side before nodding, slowly, looking Nari in the eye. Vali has gone still.

‘So why not heal father? You said he had a few months left, you could have. Why not heal mother when she got sick? That was your fault too. Why are you running around playing games on drunks and vagrants? Why aren’t you helping people, you selfish, entitled, prick?’

Loki isn’t entirely sure he managed to keep the flash of guilt from showing on his face, but he quickly leans back and raises his eyebrows. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself, Nari; selfish, entitled prick. What did you expect, boy?’

Nari’s jaw shuts with an audible click. The atmosphere is tense around their fire for a long moment until he lunges at Loki. Again, the trickster just takes the beating, waiting for Nari to let it out. Panting harshly, Nari breaks off. He stalks away from Loki, hands laced behind his head, breathing loudly through his nose in barely constrained rage. Vali gives Loki yet another look of disgust, letting his abandoned dinner fall to the dirt. He crosses over to his brother and pulls him into a hug.

Loki touches his vessel's face gingerly and decides to leave the rapidly rising bruise exactly as it is. Father knows he deserves it.

 

The next morning things are as frosty as ever between the travelers, and Loki has no more patience for his companions, and no more time to soothe their tempers. By mid-afternoon they’re in sight of what appears to be a small castle, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a boy is running to meet them faster a human child should. Vali freezes as the approaching boy’s face becomes clear. He knows those features, those eyes, and sure enough, Loki is beaming, practically radiating happiness, as he takes his… son… into his arms and spins him over his head.

‘Daddy!’ the small boy shrieks, giggling.

Vali looks away, bile rising bitter in his throat. How dare he. How dare that thieving son of a… 

He’s cut off by a tugging at his sleeve.

‘I’m Fen.’ The boy is saying, staring up at Vali with round, golden eyes. With Vali’s father’s eyes.

Nari is there, deflecting his brother’s rage before Fen notices.

‘I’m Nari, and this is my brother Vali. We’re your, ah, cousins.’

Vali glances over at Loki. The bastard seems entirely unperturbed by Nari’s lie. In fact, he seems pleased. 

Fen takes to Nari immediately, holding his hand all the way back to the farmhouse, and chatting about how soon he’ll have a little brother (because Loki can tell, but it’s supposed to be a secret). Vali feels like he’s going to be sick.

Angrboda is nothing like Sigyn. She’s not human, for one, and she lacks entirely the warmth the real Loki’s wife had possessed in spades. Loki, upon seeing her, lets out a shout of joy and runs over to give her the same sort of spinning hug he’d given Fen. It looks ridiculous, with Angrboda being twice Loki’s size and looking about eleven months pregnant. Vali wonders whether Fen is really as old as he looks, because half giant kids must be huge. He turns to talk to his brother, wondering what they’re going to do. Nari looks just as displeased as Vali.

‘He’s got a family, Val. If we kill him we’ll take Fen’s and the other one’s father like he took ours.’

‘Maybe he should have thought of that ten years ago. Fair is fair.’

Nari looks pointedly down at Fen, who is listening to their conversation with his head tilted to one side. The kid is suddenly scooped up by Loki, who gives Vali a smug look and carries his son inside.

Bastard.

 

Dinner is an awkward affair, and the four adults are grateful for Fen’s bubbly exuberance breaking up the tense atmosphere. The boy is giving his father a rundown of everything that’s happened in the three months he’s been gone, and Loki is listening with a rapt attention that even Vali has to admit he and Nari never got from their father. It figures the bodysnatcher would be a better parent than the real Loki ever had been.

 

After three days Vali has to admit he’s not going to kill Loki. Nari had let go of his anger by the time Angrboda had shown them to the guest bedroom, but Vali couldn’t forget a decade of violent hate just like that.

But he couldn’t destroy Fen’s family like his own had been. Nari told him that the past was in the past, and, yeah, Loki was a jerk, but they weren’t going to accomplish anything by killing him except turning Fen’s life into an echo of their own. And in all likelihood they wouldn’t be capable of killing Loki anyway.

Vali could agree not to kill Loki, but he still couldn’t forgive him. Not with the bastard rubbing it in his face all the time that he knew Vali was only being civil for Fen’s sake. It was only in the rare moments that Loki let his guard down that Vali saw the side of him that had convinced the twins to let go of their vendetta in the first place.

The side of Loki that loved Angrboda with all his heart and touched her pregnant belly, whispered endearments to it, every chance he got. The side of Loki that spent hours at a time playing silly games with Fen and did ridiculous things to make the boy laugh.

The day Angrboda went into labor Loki sent Vali and Nari into town with Fen, saying vaguely that he’d be able to find them when the birth was over. The three boys spent the day at a market, Vali and Nari trying to distract Fen from his questions about what was happening to his mother.

Around sunset Loki suddenly appeared before them, beaming like none of them had ever seen before. He grabbed Fen and vanished, leaving Vali and Nari staring at thin air.

‘Rude.’ Vali complained.

Nari shrugged. The man was preoccupied.

Ten minutes later Loki returned for them, sheepishly offering up the excuse that Fen needed to meet his brother first. Vali pointed out peevishly that technically they were brothers to Fen and the newborn as well, and Loki had to concede the point. Nari was sure their blood relationship, dubious as it was, was the reason Loki had allowed the pair of them to live, and welcomed them into his home despite the multiple attempts on his life.

 

Jormungandr was far too big to be a newborn. Nari’s eyes went wide upon seeing the infant looking almost a year old already. Angrboda shrugged and said that like Fen, Jormu would have to stay out of sight until he could pass for a regular child.

Loki suggested, carefully keeping his tone neutral, that since Vali and Nari were technically Jormu and Fen’s half-brothers, maybe they could stick around to give the boys a little more company. Angrboda was too exhausted to argue and Vali was too shocked by the idea to voice a protest. Fen shrieked in joy and jumped right into Nari’s arms.

 

“Staying for a while” eventually turned into living with Loki and Ang as permanent household fixtures, and by the time Jormu is six, Vali and Nari are as much a part of the family as any of them. Hel, Loki and Ang’s four year old daughter, followed Nari around constantly, while the boys seemed to prefer Vali.

Loki is gone a lot, these days. He’d fallen in with a group of beings even he described as “bloodthirsty, and awful taste in dinner treats, but more on my level than most around here” and refused to elaborate further. Nari sometimes heard him and Ang arguing over Loki’s choice of companions.

Things were peaceful around the little house. Even Vali no longer fantasized about cutting Loki’s throat. The twin’s parents were still a sore topic, but one that all parties were more than content to let lie. Then, one day Loki brought a group of his new friends home.

 

‘I kept telling her, Lo, don’t sneer at the little guy. Mistletoe can be just as dangerous as hemlock in the right hands, especially to us, but does she listen? Of course not. Bloody arrogant bitch, needs to be taken down a peg.’

‘And what do you want me to do about it?’

‘Well, you know…’

‘Kill the smug bastard, that’s what you should do. "Baldur the Beautiful", gods, what a joke. Can’t stand him or his silly twit of a mother.’

‘Well.’

Furniture creaks and scrapes along the floor as the occupants of the tiny room stand.

‘I think I can do something about that.’

Loki’s eyes glitter dangerously as his guests leave. He waves goodbye, mind already turning to plotting.

 

Vali doesn’t know why Loki wants all this mistletoe, exactly. He doesn’t believe for a second Loki’s pathetic excuse that he had a bet with the other gods that he could eat a hundred bushes without throwing up. In fact, Vali wasn’t sure he believed Loki was a god. The others seemed a lot more... bloodthirsty most of the time. Not that Loki wasn’t bloodthirsty, he was just never quite as literal about it. Some of his "friends: had been known to literally tear open throats and guzzle down the arterial spray.

Fen skipped along beside Vali while Jormu meandered behind them, stopping to catch a butterfly and hold it in his cupped hands. Jormu ran forward to show Vali his prize and Fen tripped him, causing the smaller boy to crush the bug in his flailing. Vali sighed and picked up Jormu, trying vainly to comfort the toddler.

The trip back was so stressful Vali decided not to bother trying to get a real answer out of Loki about the mistletoe.

 

Loki shuts himself away in the house for three days, muffled curses and bangs floating through the door every so often. He emerges, triumphant and grinning, holding some sort of ugly-looking, pointy stick, and distinctly not looking like he’s midway through digesting enough mistletoe to fill a barn.

Vali rolls his eyes and goes back to teaching Hel a dirty rhyme. That'll teach Loki to leave him on babysitting duty for three whole days.

 

It’s unexpected, when Frigg comes for them, righteous rage written all over her pale face. Nari lunges at her with their old knife and she backhands him into a wall. He slumps to the ground, unconscious.

Angrboda dies quickly, her heart torn out by the furious goddess when the giantess tries to protect her children.

Fen and Jormu Frigg leaves alive, turning one into a wolf cub and the other into a snake, with the aid of a glowing gem at her throat that she clasps in one slender hand. The wolf turns on the snake and sinks its fangs through the scaly body, only to be bitten in turn. Hel screams as her brothers die before her and Frigg snaps her neck.

The goddess turns to Vali, contemplative.

‘I didn’t plan that, you know,’ she says, indicating the transformed bodies of Loki’s sons behind her.

‘They were supposed to run off, get lost, maybe have normal animal lives. But, you know, I think I like this idea more.

Taking the corpse of the snake that used to be Jormu, Frigg ties Vali’s hands above his head, to a branch on the tree Loki’s house was built under. The little snake elongates as she ties the knots and when she steps back Vali finds he is unable to free himself. Poison from Jormu’s broken fangs runs down Vali’s arms, leaving trailing burns behind like acid. He grits his teeth and glares at Frigg, hate written on his face. She laughs.

‘I’d tell you to pass a message to that sniveling coward you call father, but odds are he won’t return here anyway. Who knows, though, Vali? Maybe he’ll come to save you. Don’t count on it.’

Frigg’s laughter is malicious and cold, and she trails a hand through Nari’s hair as she passes him. Vali stares in horror as his brother changes into a wolf before his eyes. Nari is still unconscious but he won’t be for long. Desperately, Vali tries to free his hands, only succeeding in splashing more poison on himself.

Frigg vanishes and a growl from Nari’s direction makes Vali freeze.

‘Nari. Brother. It’s me. You don’t have to do this. You know me. Fight it, Nari-‘ the wolf lunges, sinks sharp fangs into Vali’s stomach, and his words are cut off with a scream.

It takes Vali a long time to die. The wolf drags his intestines out and plays with them, eating Vali alive. Eventually, through the haze of blood loss, Vali whispers ‘I forgive you, brother,’ as he drops out of consciousness for the last time.

 

Loki returns an hour later to find the wolf the only thing living. Vali is mostly consumed and the corpses of Loki’s family lay scattered, already gone cold in the winter air. Nari growls at him, muzzle red and dripping with his brother’s blood.

Loki stands frozen, unable to move or process the horror that had destroyed his new life, his new family. He holds Hel’s broken body in his arms. But her soul is long gone and to get it back, to get any of them back from Purgatory, Loki would have to return to being what he once was. He would be a beacon for the rest of the Host, calling them straight here.

And if Michael finds him, finds his children, the three of them will be destroyed, souls ripped apart at the seams like the hundreds of other Nephilim Gabriel himself had killed. Their fate would be worse than death, worse than what they've already suffered.

He screams in rage at his loss and flies North, intending to find Frigg and smite her for this.

Baldur wasn’t even dead, had gotten to the antidote in time, and she had punished Loki for his crime five times over.

But when Loki finds Frigg, leaning over her son’s pale, comatose form, he doesn’t have the heart. Every time he had tried to do something for family he destroyed one. Frigg had done her damage. And Loki had learned his lesson.

He vanishes into thin air and Frigg smiles, coldly, in his wake. Barely a year later Loki would return and kill her in front of her son, but for now, the victory was hers.

Vali is almost unrecognisable. Nari had torn his brother down from the tree, his arms still dangling, held there by the corpse of Jormungandr, while the wolf chews on the flesh of his brother’s throat.

Loki ignores the twins and buries his family, one by one. As he works, golden feathers fall in a steady trickle behind him, littering the ground, and clouds gather above.

Undoing Frigg’s magic takes only a second. Transformations are nowhere near her specialty, after all, and the spell is sloppy, weak work, that wouldn’t have held on a stronger mind. But Fen and Jormu had been children and Nari was only human.

Loki lifts Jormu’s serpentine body free of the tree, letting Vali’s dismembered arms fall to the ground. He places the boy’s body in the small grave and fills it. The rain falls harder and harder as he works and the air grows cold and thin.

Loki is kneeling in a puddle of mud over an inch deep when he comes back to himself enough to hear the whining. Behind him, Nari has abandoned Vali’s midsection in favour of gnawing on one of the arms, still coated in insoluble acid. Apparently it’s hurting the wolf.

‘I should kill you too,’ Loki sneers at Nari. ‘Brother-killing coward, pathetic, weak minded runt.’

Every word is punctuated by a crack of thunder, and Loki’s eyes are glowing with barely restrained rage, with the sparks of his true nature trying to force their way to the surface. Violently, he shoves them back, taking a deep breath.

Nari whines, pitifully. His mouth is smoking a little where Jormu’s venom burned him. In a fit of mercy, or something similar, Loki heals him, and releases the spell.

It backfires.

Nari screams, and screams and screams. Every second of that afternoon, of eating his brother, of enjoying the taste of his flesh, is burned into his mind, and his human self can’t cope. Loki swears, and changes the boy again. A more permanent spell than Frigg’s had been, and one that would remove the burden from Nari.

The tiny puppy stares up at Loki, wagging its stumpy tail like the idiot it is.

Loki has one more body to bury.

The remnants of Vali are small, and take only a few minutes. Loki materializes a stone, carved with his family's faces, and leaves it over their bodies as a marker.

Then he takes Nari and leaves his second home forever.

 

_A few centuries later_

Loki flipps through the glossy magazine pages, chuckling to himself whenever he finds anything noteworthy. Reaching the end, he stops for a second to consider the chainsaw wielding horror show.

‘Ooh, that’s a good one.’

The sound of his voice wakes Nari where he’s snoozing on the other couch, and the little dog sticks his head up. Loki whistles and Nari bounds over and jumps into his lap. Loki holds Nari’s head steady and looks into his eyes.

‘Could you eat? I could eat.’

The platters on Loki’s kitchen table don’t have anything resembling dog food on them, but Nari doesn’t eat meat anymore anyway. Loki thinks it might be lingering memories of the kid’s first act in animal form that make him shy away from the stuff he should eat, but it doesn’t really matter, anyway; Loki can ensure the dog gets enough nutrition without him necessarily having to eat it, and wipes any toxins from his system just as easily. Nari seems happy enough, like this. His canine brain can’t really process the memories of Vali, of the taste of Vali’s flesh, that threaten to drive Nari mad every time Loki tries to turn him back.

Abruptly, Loki’s attention shifts from Nari back to his own needs. The dog wanders off when Loki summons his illusions, well aware that the possibility of petting is gone. He curls back up on the couch and falls asleep.

 **If you're not reading this on AO3 it has been stolen.**

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone comments on the epilogue, I'm definitely not a supporter of giving dogs a vegan diet, but there really wasn't any suitable canine food on that table in Tall Tales, so I suspect Gabriel really was using grace to keep the dog healthy. Or it wasn't a real dog, but who am I to say?
> 
> Oh and yes, Gabriel is in the Mariana Trench at the beginning.
> 
> You can find me at platonic-rabbit.tumblr.com


End file.
